Shareholders of Home Bancshares, Happy Bancshares approve merger

Shareholders of Conway-based Home Bancshares and Amarillo-based Happy Bancshares have both approved a proposed a $918 million merger that was announced earlier this year.

Home Bancshares, parent company of Centennial Bank, announced it would enter the Texas market with the all-stock acquisition of Happy Bancshares, parent of $6.2 billion-asset Happy State Bank.

The pro forma bank will be approximately $23.3 billion in assets, $13.4 billion in loans and $18.7 billion in deposits. It will be one of the 75 largest banks headquartered in the U.S. The deal is still pending regulatory approval and is expected to close in the first quarter of 2022.

Of the shares voted at the special Home Bancshares’ meeting, 99.47% voted in favor of the issuance of HOMB common stock for the merger. Happy’s shareholders voted to approve the merger with 90.7% of the outstanding shares of Happy voting and 97.27% voting in favor of the move.

“I want to thank both the Happy shareholders and HOMB shareholders for their support of the merger. The strong vote is an overwhelming show of strength for the merger of these two great companies,” said John Allison, Home Bancshares Chairman.

While Home Bancshares has large footprints in Arkansas and Florida, Happy Bancshares will grow the bank’s Texas footprint to several communities, including a network of bank branches in communities in the Texas Panhandle, South Plains, Austin, Central Texas and the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.